Life cycle assessment of rice straw co-firing with coal power generation in Malaysia

•The overall rice straw preparations are between 0.152 and 0.163 kg CO2-eq per kg rice straw.•Depending on co-firing ratio the CO2 reduce up to 77% less and SOX to 55% less.•Calculated cost of co-firing is 93.29% higher compared to conventional baseline coal cost.

This paper investigates the economic feasibility of rice straw co-firing at coal power plants in Malaysia and in doing so looks at the operating, capital, and logistic costs. Co-firing rice straw in an existing coal power plant is a technique that could reduce CO2 emissions and make Malaysia less dependency on coal resources. In a country such as Malaysia with abundant biomass resources, utilizing biomass residue also would help reach government targets of developing renewable energy under the country's Fuel Diversification Policy. The overall rice straw life cycle assessment presented here analyses environmental, energy and economic aspects for co-firing of rice straw at existing coal power plants in Malaysia. Analysis of GHG emissions and energy consumption throughout the entire co-firing rice straw life cycle was based on selected coal power plant capacity output. This paper also analyses the implication of rice straw use under different co-fired ratios, transportation systems and CO2 emission prices. The reduction of GHG emissions was found to be significant even at a lower co-firing ratio.